“Sounds like you have a bit of a three-ring circus going on at your house,” he says. I’ve been giving him the broad strokes so I didn’t just spring my bizarre new living situation on him in person.
“Yes, a total circus, complete with wild animals. My daughter brought home this wrecking crew in a black shag coat. Caroline—that’s the dog—ate my phone in the middle of the night. She literally snuck into my room and chewed it to bits. This is problematic for a number of reasons, but mainly because I use my phone as my alarm clock. Normally I’d have just woken up on my own—I’m an early riser—”
“Still?”
“Still,” I confirm, blushing a bit, having forgotten that I’ve woken up with this man before. However, it seems too soon to delve into that portion of our past, so I acknowledge this comment no further. “Thing is, I was exhausted because she kept waking me up all night with her incessant barking. I guess she heard an owl hooting outside? Anyway, I missed a huge breakfast meeting this morning because of this. Slept right through it. And no one could call me because my phone was in thousands of pieces.”
Wyatt chuckles politely. He never did let out giant guffaws like Chris, which isn’t a bad thing. “You missed your meeting because your dog ate your phone? That’s one shade past your dog eating your homework. Did people believe you?”
“Would you believe me? I’ve never in my life been late for a meeting, let alone missed one, and this was with a big new client we’ve been trying to land. Luckily one of my colleagues was there and she covered for me, so it was fine for the firm, but not so great for me.” Vanessa was practically running victory laps around the nineteenth floor by the time I arrived at the office at noon.
“I’m sure no one will judge you too harshly for one indiscretion.” He gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“I hope not.”
Except I haven’t had just the one indiscretion. Chaos has ensued over the past five days since Chris has been in the house, and truly none of it has been his fault. For example, I had to rearrange this initial client meeting more than once to make some accommodations, such as when the girls were using my car to bring Chris to his doctor’s appointment, which would have been fine had they told me first. Stassi did bring up Chris’s truck, but apparently neither of them can drive stick shift. Nor can I, which would have been good to know before I tried to take it to the train.
And then there are my parents. I was able to get my dad in to see the gerontologist, but only because of a midday cancelation, which meant I had to take a day off at the last minute, hence more rescheduling. Max surprised me by coming to the appointment without complaint and then was sharp as a damn tack the entire time the doctor ran his evaluation. While we were there, Dr. Vora drew blood and took a urine sample and we’re waiting for those results. Once we know what’s happening there, we can proceed with next-level testing to check on his memory skills and problem-solving abilities, and if those prove inconclusive, we move on to a CT scan and possibly an MRI.
In a private conversation, Dr. Vora wanted to know if there was a possibility that my dad might have trended a bit bigoted because of the times in which he grew up. He says this isn’t terribly unusual in his patients and thus far that seems to be his only issue. I’ll have to talk to Foster and Judith about this, because . . . maybe? I’m not sure what to root for here, dementia or small-mindedness. The doctor also wanted to know if my father had been under any undue stress lately, but what kind of strain could he be facing, unless Bunky Cushman suddenly, drastically improved his short game?
Regardless, my personal life is wreaking havoc on my work life right now, which has never been an issue with me. I am not Personal Problem Gal. I am not Crying in the Bathroom Lady. I am not Woebegone Sigh as You Walk Past My Desk So You’ll Ask Me What’s Wrong Woman. No one even knew I was divorcing until someone noticed I no longer wore my wedding ring. (Thanks to Vanessa, I learned long ago to stop mentioning anything vaguely home-related in the office.) And yet despite my best efforts, home is now having an impact on my performance. I mean, this afternoon, Mr. Waterstone stopped me in the hallway to ask if everything is okay with me and if I needed to take any of my vacation time. I’m desperately unhappy about having registered on his radar, particularly so close to our upcoming meeting about my promotion, and that needs to stop right quick.
Our drinks arrive and Wyatt sets them both in front of me.
“Please, ladies first. You have the honor of choosing.”
“I’ll try the Moscow Mule, but you have to taste the French 75 at the same time so we can toast,” I say.
“If you insist.” He lifts the cocktail, which is served in one of those wide old French champagne glasses, and says, “May we kiss those we please and please those we kiss.”
Aha! Looks like I’m not the only one trying to flirt here. I give him a coy smile, and we clink glasses. We each take a sip of our respective drinks. Mine tastes strongly of ginger, which I appreciate. I always forget I enjoy the flavor of ginger, having relied on it so heavily to settle my stomach when I was pregnant. Chris was forever on the lookout for ginger-based food and drink back in the day. The day he found ginger root in the grocery store? You’d have thought he’d located the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Wait, why am I thinking about Chris right now? Stop it.
“Mmm, very citrusy,” he says of the 75.
“Shall we switch?” I ask. We swap and I take a sip of his, which I immediately want to spit out because it’s like a mouthful of liquid Lemonhead candies. His face is equally puckered after his taste of the Moscow Mule. Without a word, we each take back our original drinks.
Wyatt wipes his mouth with a napkin and clears his palate with some wasabi peas. “I have a small-world story for you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mmm-hmm. Apparently my neighbors bought your parents’ old place in West Palm.”
“I beg your pardon?” He has to be mistaken. My parents haven’t sold their place in West Palm. They would have mentioned it. You don’t just conduct a major real estate transaction and move out of the state without telling your kids.
Unless there’s a problem the gerontologist has yet to diagnose.
Damn it.
“Yes. The Hanovers are very excited. Apparently it’s almost impossible to find something available in Vista Pines, especially a home right on the fourteenth green. They told me to say hello to Marjorie and Max.”
“I’ll do that,” I say.
I have a great deal of difficulty concentrating on anything Wyatt says for the rest of our time together. We touch upon his divorce, (amicable, no kids) and his job (amicable, no kids) and everything else he’s been up to for the past twenty-five years (amicable, no kids). We part with a kiss on the cheek and the promise to get together soon for a proper dinner. I hustle off to the Camry, digging out my new phone before I even reach for my keys.
I stay parked while I call Foster.
“Hey, little sister, what’s going on?” he says by way of greeting.
“Did you know Max and Marjorie sold their place in Vista Pines?”
“I’m sorry, what? Hello? Penny?”
“Yes, hi, it’s me. So you didn’t know.”
“Hell, no. We just bought our tickets to go down there for Christmas! Shoot. You think they’re refundable? We booked on JetBlue. They have free in-flight entertainment and brand-name snacks.”
“Fos, I need you to focus. Do you find it odd that they sold their place without mentioning it to us? Don’t you think that’s worthy of a conversation?”
Foster doesn’t seem too upset. “Eh, maybe a little? But we don’t have the kind of parents who want to share their feeeelings with us. They’re old-school, so it’s not too surprising. I wouldn’t read that much into it.”
I’m not satisfied with his lack of urgency here. “Have you spent much time with Max lately?”
&
nbsp; “I’ve seen him at the club. Why?”
“Are you noticing any changes in him?”
“Hmm. His backswing’s been for shit. Too short. The pro calls it ‘old man swing.’ I think his rotator cuff’s been acting up. I keep saying he should look into physical therapy, or at least get a massage to open things up, but no one listens to me.”
I try to remain calm. “Mental changes. I’m talking about his faculties. I’m worried he may have an onset of dementia.”
“Dementia? Definitely not. He just read me the riot act about the new payroll system I installed. Said I was nuts to change what had worked for so many years. He walked me through every part of why his old system was superior. Gotta tell ya, he was right. Turns out the new software is super-glitchy, so I went back to the old way.”
Huh. “Does he seem on edge at all? Agitated? Quick to escalate?”
“Yes. I’ve definitely witnessed that.”
“How long would you say he’s been that way?”
“Every day for my entire life.”
“Foster, you’re not helping.”
“What? I’m trying here. What do you want? Max seems completely normal, again, save for his backswing. I wonder if chondroitin would help? Or a cortisone shot?”
I begin to drum the steering wheel in agitation. “Give me something, anything. There’s weirdness afoot he won’t tell me about, and I can’t figure it out. Until I get to the root of the problem, I can’t help him. And until I can help him, I’m not sure I can get him out of my house.”
“Yeah, I could see how that’d be a problem. Judith lasted, what, a week with them?” Foster says. He’s laughing, but I know Judith didn’t think any of this was funny. “Marjorie called her a ‘harridan.’ What is that, like, a belly dancer? Let’s see . . . something. Something about Max. Well, okay, here you go—my financial department ran across a weird recurring Accounts Payable to an M. Ramos, and I asked Max about it. He said he’d talk to his old accountant about it. He must have taken care of it, because it’s off the books now. But that’s it.”
“That doesn’t seem like a big deal.”
“Exactly.”
I exhale so hard I fog a bit of my windshield. “This has been a useless phone call, Foster.”
“Hurtful language! You can make it up to me by having me and Judith over for dinner. Chris is up for visitors, right? Did he get the fruit basket I sent?”
“He did, but what do you expect him to do with two dozen cactus pears? He’s one person.”
“I wanted to give him the most expensive stuff I could find to let him know how much I care.”
“Why didn’t you send something with more of a shelf life, like wine or scotch?”
“Where were you Monday, when I was placing orders on the Internet?”
“Okay, Fos, I’ve gotta go. Tell Judith I’ll call her this weekend.”
“Cool. Bye, sis. TELL CHRIS I MISS HIM.”
I put away my phone and pull out of the parking space to head for home. Regardless of what Foster thinks, something major is up with my father, and I’m making it my job to find out what it is.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
May 1974
“Penelope, darling, can you please answer the door?”
“Yeah, Mom!” I run down the stairs as fast as I can in my shiny church shoes.
“Say ‘yes,’ not ‘yeah,’ Penelope, and walk down the stairs like a lady, not a charging bull, please,” my mom instructs me from the depths of her bedroom, where she’s setting her hair with hot rollers.
How does she know I was running when she can’t even see me? Still, I slow to a walk.
She’s been extra-bossy since we moved to this house. Lately I feel like she’s trying to create this image that we are some kind of perfect family from a magazine. She used to be more easygoing. Now she’s always all, “I don’t want the neighbors to get the wrong impression!” when I do stuff like yell out a window to tell Foster to come inside for supper.
Since when is that not okay?
She used to do that on our old street, like, all the time!
Oh, and we’re not supposed to call supper “supper” anymore—it’s “dinner” now.
She hates when I throw my bike on the lawn instead of parking it in the garage now, too. Sometimes I forget, and I swear that whenever I do, she automatically knows and sends me back outside to put it away right.
The weirdest thing is she doesn’t call me “Penny” anymore. I’m always “Penelope” now, and she only used to use my full name when I was in trouble. My first thought is always that I’ve somehow screwed up when I hear her say my name.
Still, I’m real happy we moved, even with the changes. Our new house has a double set of front doors, which is pretty neat. They open extra-wide. Our old house just had the one door, which was way less exciting. We didn’t move very far from our old neighborhood, and I didn’t even have to change schools, but my parents tell me this is a giant leap for mankind, like the astronaut Neil Armstrong says. I’ll say—we have one hundred percent more front door now! Our last door was made mostly from aluminum, so it was real light, but these big wooden dealies weigh about a million pounds each. I really have to yank to get ’em open.
When I finally pry the big ol’ wooden guys apart, Karin is here. Karin goes to my school and is in my fifth-grade class. We always got along, but now that I live down the street from her, she’s become my best friend. Her mom and dad are divorced, which makes me sad for her. I feel like that would be lonely, but she says she is great friends with her mom and it’s fine. I can’t imagine being friends with my mom because she’s too busy telling me what to do.
“Hey! Wanna come outside? A bunch of kids are playing TV tag, and I figured you wouldn’t want to miss it.” Karin’s wearing dungarees and a T-shirt, so she’s ready to play.
I love TV tag. Even though I’m not the fastest runner, I have a really good memory, so I can always come up with the name of a television show that hasn’t been used. I’m smart because most of the other kids only call out Saturday-morning cartoons. Once they run through Scooby-Doo, The Yogi Bear Show, and the Harlem Globetrotters, they’re fresh out of ideas. But I make sure to read the TV Guide so I can throw out crazy stuff like 60 Minutes or Mannix.
“I wish,” I say. I point to my ugly ruffled dress with the weird, stiff petticoat underneath. I feel like one of those creepy Victorian dolls with the glass eyes. Nobody wears outfits like this. My mom wanted me to look fancy to impress my gam-gam.
Here’s a news flash: An expensive party dress is going to have the opposite effect. Gam-Gam gets real mad and kind of resentful when things are too nice. I just don’t see her appreciating a dress with this much lace for no good reason, especially since I’m not getting confirmed in it. Might be what she calls a venal sin, if I remember my CCD classes right? (No one has told Gam-Gam we go to the Episcopal church now instead of the Catholic one. I suspect it’s a very bad idea to bring up the subject.)
I tell Karin, “I have to go to a Mother’s Day brunch at our new country club with my grandmother and my aunt and uncle and stuff. Maybe I can play when I’m done.”
Karin slumps against the doorframe. Even her pigtails droop with disappointment. “Aw, man. I won’t have any fun without you.”
“I’m not going to have any fun, either. My gam-gam is a big crab. I thought grandmothers were supposed to be nice old ladies who make cookies and stuff, but she mostly just smokes and says things that hurt people’s feelings. I don’t know why we have to go eat waffles with her. Mom and my auntie Marilyn will be all excited for Gam-Gam to be here, and then she will say awful stuff to both of them the whole time until she leaves. Then my mom will be in a bad mood for a couple of days. It’s like everyone loses.”
Karin’s eyes grow huge. “Really? My grandma knits me fuzzy sweaters and sneaks me candy when my dad says I can’
t have any more and sends me fifty dollars for my birthday.”
“See? That’s what they’re supposed to do,” I say, monkeying with the itchy lace hem of my dress, yanking on it so hard I think something might have ripped underneath.
“Penelope, leave your dress alone!” I hear my mother call.
“Okay!” I say.
How does she know?
To Karin, I say, “Gam-Gam always tells me I’m lucky to not be working in a button factory. What does that even mean?”
Karin kicks at the welcome mat with the toe of her Buster Brown oxford. “I dunno. Well, call me when you get home.”
“I will. Hey, for your game, use Doctor Who, Nova, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus. You will win. See you later!”
“Ooh, those are good.” She runs down our cobblestone walk to a waiting group of kids farther down the block. The ones who see me wave and I wave back.
I really like this neighborhood. I liked our old one, but this one is so much nicer; plus I still see my old friends at school, so I’m not missing anything. The houses are a lot farther apart and they are much bigger, with more trees and flowers. When we pulled up here for the first time, I thought maybe my parents were joking that this was ours, because it is huge.
Auntie Marilyn is the only other one of Gam-Gam’s kids who even lives in the suburbs—everyone else is still in the city. The way all the brothers and sisters talk about Glencoe, you’d think we had cows or something out here! That’s crazy. We’re less than a mile from the grocery store, and we can walk to the train station and to buy ice-cream cones—that’s hardly the boonies. We’re still in Cook County!
Anyway, that day, my mom and dad took out their key and opened the door and let us in and then the movers showed up with all our stuff. If our being in this house is a joke, it’s a really elaborate one that’s gone on for two whole months.
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